Oases: From Samarkand to Chang'an to ... now

Abstract

With the development of modern high-speed communication our sense of local and global are blurred to the point that these two topological extremes are often conflated as ‘glocal’. This paper examines the significance of this change and assesses its effects on the productivity and creativity of electroacoustic musicians. More profoundly, it also considers whether this shift in social geography had any bearing on the constitution of an explicit electroacoustic community.

To specifically carry out this analysis we consider how an understanding of the system of social relations as a non-random network changes our perception of proximity and distance. We then derive a typology for the contemporary critiques of new technologies and highlight the opportunities it offers to interpret social relations anew. This analysis helps firm up the notion of virtuality that we use to explore our understanding of electroacoustic musical creation with respect to the benefits it can derive from a ‘glocal’ environment. It also establishes the premise of a collective subject emerging from ‘glocal’ communications that may serve as a seed to a renewed electroacoustic community.